May 4, 2012

"For non-Natives, this may be surprising. They expect to see 'high cheekbones,' as Warren described her grandfather as having, or tan skin. They want to know of pow wows, dusty reservations, sweat lodges, peyote and cheap cigarettes. When outsiders look at these ostensibly white people as members of Native America, they don’t see minorities. As a result, Warren feels she must satisfy these new birthers and justify her existence."

Writes lawprof Kevin Noble Maillard, who is an enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, who says that if Warren had "tout[ed] herself as American Indian" to get on the Harvard faculty, the small community of Native American lawprofs — 0.5% of all lawprofs — would have heard about it.

126 comments:

I can't believe the total blindness to irony of people who describe others as racist stereotypes in the service of dispelling racial stereotypes. Smart, professory, writerish people who live and swim in the pool of ideas. The intelligentsia! I guess it's like a secret handshake in that pool.

Let me try to make a point. Yes, a Nazi reference. Nazi Germany had racial purity laws. They divided up the people in classes such as pure-Aryan, partial mongrel, partial Jew. Go to the Holocause museum in DC to see a chart on how to dedect a Jew by physical characteristics.

That is what the left in the US is doing here. They rate people by how aryan and non-aryan in they are, and give them preferences or penalize them based on the results.

So a rich white gal like Warren gets free stuff. A poor Scandanavian-American like me gets a foot on my throat.

…if Warren had "tout[ed] herself as American Indian" to get on the Harvard faculty, the small community of Native American lawprofs — 0.5% of all lawprofs — would have heard about it”…uhhh…apparently not…

Maillard is missing the significant point and has an overt prejudice to boot. He is not a good advocate for her position. Actually, he is not even a good advocate to defend his own.

Well, that is to be expected when individuals seeking to enhance their wealth, power, and stature in society learn that denigration of individual dignity is justified and even "progressive", thereby contributing to generational corruption. They must be utterly morose that their philosophy holds a minority position in our society.

You people are harsh. She checked that box by mistake...10 times...but it was a mistake...in retrospect. So leave her alone, or better yet, send her out on an iceflow to die alone (inuits are NA right?)

While truck driving I was delivering a load in Niagra NY. The only radio I could receive at the time was out of Canada. They were having trouble with their "Abo's". It took me 3o minutes to figger out that they meant Native Americans, or to use the vernacular, Indians.

Some tribe up there had banned all non-tribal people from living on their reservation...and that included married family members. I thought that a bit harsh, but hell, I don't live in Canada. There were also quite a few billboards spouting all kinds of "America is for Indians only" crap. Ya'll let me know how that turns out, okay?

Maillard was unaware that Harvard was advertising her to the public as native American ("admittedly, news of Elizabeth Warren’s Cherokee and Delaware ancestry comes as a surprise") but he claims he would have known if she was saying it in private, checking boxes on confidential job applications. Not much IQ there. Apparently he got his job by checking boxes too.

I do! The one single point of historical evidence in her favor is that her great-great-grandfather listed his mother as having been Cherokee on a marriage application he filed in 1894 Oklahoma. But in 1893-1894 Oklahoma a whole lot of people were claiming (or attempting to claim) Cherokee ancestry, because it meant a shot at the moneys of the Dawes Commission settlement payments to the tribe for the Cherokee Strip.

Yet the Dawes Commission rolls do not have his name on them, and the odds that an Oklahoman Cherokee failed to file for a share of the Dawes money is small, and substantial number of people treid to grab a share of it on manufactured evidence ... and failed.

Aside: How old was her g'g'-grandfather in 1894, anyway? Warren was born in 1949. That seems like a lot of generations to cram into 55 years. Not that folks aren't capable of it.

The Cherokees had 4 clans, like eagle, bear, etc. And when a man marries a woman, he moves over into her clan. The braves get to go on weeks on end hunting trips while the women rule in the village to keep order while the braves are missing.

Then when there is a religious festival to make the clan spirits happy or submit to the sun god, the men get to go into the lodge and smoke and chant while the women have to stay outside and keep working.

I think about this every time we chant and chop at the Atlanta Braves games. We ignore the women except for Ted Turner's wife Jane Fonda whom we accept as an honorary Brave.

In Georgia, the indians in the NW quadrant were bought off by paying a half breed chief some gold and livestock for a treaty signature, and then they were run out of the State over to Alabama where the learned to play football.

The half breed chief was always half a Scotsman and he valued the gold more than the happy hunting grounds.

In one case a half breed chief's rich daughter married a North Carolina scots-irish man who later became Governor of NC.

But we were better to the Georgia Indians than Meade's Indiana ancestors wrer who tricked the Indiana Indians at at Tippicanoe so badly that the settler's leader became our President in 1840.

The indian war leader was so fierce and famous that his name was given to an impressed Ohio man's son who lived later up to the famous indian's name down in Georgia: Tecumseh Sherman.

The professor does not tell you that there is NO requirement whatsoever for any degree of Cherokee blood to become a tribal chief or hold other tribal office. As long as you can demonstrate an ancestor on the Dawes roll, you are a Cherokee for purposes of tribal elections. If you can't demonstrate that, you are not a Cherokee for election purposes.

So is Warren descended from someone on the Dawes roll?

She's never said (or shown) that she is. You can bet your butt that she would if she could.

So what the professor did not tell you is that Warren would not be eligible for tribal office.

As bad as she had been, while living in Atlanta as Turner's wife she converted to Christianity because of the influence of her black chauffer. He wasn't Herman Cain's daddy, but he got through to her and she was born again into our tribe with all her past sins forgiven; and we stand by her. Of course Ted Turner immediately threw her out. He wanted his liberal whore back.

my wife was born in oklahoma from parents who were also from oklahoma. one of my wife's father's grandmothers was a full blood indian. we're not totally sure which tribe, because if you were a card carrying indian back then there were all sorts of restrictions (registered indians had papers, just like pure-blood dogs from the AKC). for example, indians were prohibited from carrying or controlling money, so a white person would do it for them. one look at grandma's picture would easily tell one of her indian heritage, but i guess nobody talked about such things.

which means my wife is a quarter indian. and our kids are 1/8 indian. 4 times the indian blood of ms. warren! ugh!

my wife and i did talk to our kids about their genetic indian heritage. there is no culture heritage: my wife doesn't know any indian culture because nobody ever taught her.

my kids think it's kind of cool, but neither of them have an interest in claiming themselves to be minorities. i am proud of that fact for no reason that i can articulate.

Other than on her faculty applications, of course Warren never "tout[ed] herself as American Indian" precisely because it would have been (and it is) obviously untrue in any meaningful sense.

What's being ignored is that by telling this lie on her applications, the entire point of the exercise was to entice law schools to hire her so that they could report her as a minority faculty member, without cross-referencing her by name (which would have revealed the fraud).

Her application, in other words, was an invitation for her prospective employers to use her in defrauding the public at large. I don't know if her employers before Harvard reported her as "minority faculty" or not, but Harvard did -- thus Harvard, and any law school which likewise relied upon and reported her "minority" status -- are her active co-conspirators in the fraud.

Was the prospective benefit from this fraud enough to get her hired, by itself? Of course not!

Does the fraud mean she wasn't an effective teacher or scholar once hired? No, no one is claiming that, so far as I know.

But could it have made a difference, at the margins, between ending up in a top-five law school or somewhere in the 21-40 tier? Oh, yeah. That was the whole point.

Maillard is himself a member of the Seminole nation, and his defense of Warren is that she couldn't possibly have claimed to be Native American in order to benefit from the affirmative action advantage such a claim would confer, because had she done so, he would have know about it. Really, that is his argument:

Suffice to say this isn't rigorous analysis or a robust defense, and the left really ought to stay away from the subject because any amount of attention to it invites the obvious three questions that should have been immediately asked of Professor Warren:

1.) Did Professor Warren communicate Native American status in any way when she sought the law school jobs at Harvard or her posts at Rutgers, Houston or UT?

2.) If so is it possible that the hiring committee at any of those law schools gave any weight to her self-designated status as Native American?

3.) If so, was that just to other candidates for the position, minorities and non-minorities alike?

It is this last question which is most dangerous to Professor Warren's political career, but also most relevant for the affirmative action debate, which will return to the Supreme Court this fall in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas.

The debate about affirmative action ought always to have been about not who got into colleges and graduate schools or who got contracts because of the preferences, but who didn't "get in" or get the contract because of the advantage conferred on others simply by status as opposed to merit. Individuals got passed over not because of merit, but because of boxes checked by others and decisions made to increase "diversity." "Diversity," as Jonah Goldberg discussed in his brilliant new Tyranny of Cliches, has always been a cover for social engineering of the worst sort, and the Warren controversy draws the attention of voters to the injustice of racial preferences in a way sure to disadvantage her and the cause of "diversity" generally...

I served on the Faculty Appointments Committee of Chapman Law School for most of the first decade of the school's life, and have worked through the thousands of applications to the Association of American Law Schools, each one of which has a box on which the applicant can choose to declare ethnic background. Those boxes help get interviews and jobs, and only a fool or a dishonest defender of "diversity" will claim otherwise. Thus the three questions for Professor Warren. They aren't hard to answer, but whether the Boston Globe or any other MSM outlet will patiently press for their full and complete answer remains to be seen. It hasn't happened yet.

I hadn't heard about that (with Fonda) if she has found Jesus, I hope she's happy. No, I won't throw her out with the bath water. One of the reasons I am against corporal punishment is just that reason. I also believe in life in prison, because I can't read minds.

And I'm man enough to still would've liked to have seen "Barbarella 2"

1/32nd would not qualify Elizabeth Warren to be an enrolled member of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians. They require 1/16th. The Eastern Band are those Cherokee who evaded being relocated to Oklahoma over the Trail of Tears.

BTW the Eastern Band is actively culling their membership rolls to lower the numbers who share in the casino profits.

For a change I disagree with you, AllenS. In my opinion Revenant positively nails it at 5:38 -- except that he should have said is that he finds it "... hilarious is that any sane person would consider a person who is 31/32nds blonde blue-eyed white to be a "racial minority."

Fixed it for you, Rev.

Warren kind of reminds me of a Jewish woman I knew who checked the "Hispanic" box for her kids because her husband was Sephardic (for those of you who don't know many Jewish people, Sephardic Jews were formerly in Spain but were expelled during the Inquisition).

I've read that a couple of times and I'm having trouble getting his point.

Well, he is pretty clear on the "Republicans are evil" issue, and he doesn't seem to approve of "box checkers" which fits with the Warren story. But there are several misleading statements of fact which weaken his argument, whatever it is.

I hope Brown doesn't follow up on this.. the stink bomb has gone off.. the political hey that could have been made has been made.. move on and don't look like you are going after her for being Native American.

People simply don't know that when the Cherokees encountered the white man, they greeted him with single malt scotch, feng shui -ed tepees, invitations to summer in the Hamptons, and a promise to discreetly look the other way if he wanted to have an affair with their wives.

For, you must understand, the Cherokees were one of the five "civilized" tribes.

No time to read all the comments, but has anyone mentioned that photo of Ann in the upper right corner? Look at those high cheek bones, come on Ann fess up, you are another Native American law prof. Personally I hate the name Native American, we who were born here are all native Americans.

It matters little whether or not the Cherokee Nation accepts Elizabeth Warren as one of their own. It's hardly the point.

The point is that this white woman (and no one has ever taken Liz for anything other than a white woman) who is separated by generations from her Native blood and has never suffered deprivation, prejudice or any other kind of harm because of her Native blood should not be able to derive benefit because of it. And that her benefit might come at the cost of someone whose only failing is that he or she can't claim a great-great-great-grandmother of a favored race or ethnicity makes the whole thing quite obscene.

Kevin Noble Maillard sounds a tad defensive. What's his history of trading on his status as an "enrolled member of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma"?

Nobody doubts she is 1/32nd Cherokee. What we find hilarious is that any sane person would consider a person who is 31/32nds white to be a "racial minority".

It depends on what sort of nonwhite ancestry the 1/32nd fraction is. Being 1/32nd black is certainly enough for one to be considered black for all purposes. 1/32nd Asian would not be enough, however, and the same is probably true for being 1/32nd Hispanic.

Native American ancestry is more complicated due to the tribal membership issue.

What's really interesting is that the Cherokee people of the Carolinas (from which Warren believes she came) were very possibly descended from Europeans who migrated across the edge of the ice shelf at the end of the last ice age.

I think that most people's objection here is that Warren did not experience the (presumed) difficulty of growing up as a Native American. If that is the case, why should she be given affirmative action preferences, and why should she be given minority status?

One point that hasn't been discussed is how this points out an excellent way to destroy the AA system, as pretty much every "white" person in the US that has been here for more than a couple generations has some "protected class" blood.

If she's "Native American" with 1/32 share, I have a choice of Native American (1/16), Hispanic (1/4), and most likely traces of Black if you back far enough (as my ancestors did live in the South).

But somehow I did the white guy with Germanic surname thing - silly me.

Even if she is 1/32 Cherokee (which still hasn't been proven), she's guilty of a scam.

She checked the box when she knew damn well it was her passport to a faculty spot at a top-tier law school. After she got to Harvard, she stopped checking the box. I'd say there's a 99% likelihood she did so either:1) to hide her AA scam because she knew she didn't have proof, or2) she didn't need to be a minority anymore - in fact, she knew if she maintained her minority status, some would know she didn't actually get the Harvard gig on her teaching/academic merits.

Perfect way for a liberal to be hoisted on her identity politics petard.

The litmus test for Native American status, isn't who's eligible for Affirmative Action (which cheats others) but who's eligible for a quarterly check representing your share of the Tribe's Casino profits (which cheats you). Who is an "Indian" for Indian purposes is much more rigorous than who's an Indian for government benefit purposes.

The tests should be (1) the same standard and (2) require the same evidence. Where BIG MONEY is concerned no one's word is good enough.

According to liberals, Sarah Palin is not truly a woman and Herman Cain is not an authentic black man. Using the same calibrations, the professor has examined Elizabeth Warren's background and determined that she is really, truly an Indian. If, however, Elizabeth should ever take a position that that deviates more than 1/32 from liberal orthodoxy, her tribal membership will be revoked.....I can see why the professor is so tolerant and inclusive. Dollars to donuts, she was not competing against any Indians for these jobs. The competitors she had a leg up on were women like Althouse. Althouse has more standing in this case and more reason to feel aggrieved than the Indian professor.

If we're not allowed to whinge is it alright if we ridicule? Mock and jape perhaps? Can we please enjoy observing one squirm within one's own nest one made, and then remark on it? Can we please explore the very real ironies that arise from our own best intentions and talk about that?

My wife's parents were both from Sicily. I was wondering if my son could be a minority. Sicily was originally settled by people from the Iberian region. It was also part of the Kingdom of Aragon (also part of Spain). So my son would be Spanish. But then again, it was ruled by the Fatimids from Egypt for a while so he could also be Muslim or maybe even an African! I wonder if we could list Sicilian as a minority? How about Mafiosi?

You can always count on the grievance Cavalry to come riding in to defend one of their own. Imagine if Scott Brown had been the one saying he was "Indian." The Cavalry would be all over the place whining that he was being a phony opportunist.

Harvard Law School lists one lone Native American faculty member on its latest diversity census report — but school officials and campaign aides for Elizabeth Warren refused to say yesterday whether it refers to the Democratic Senate candidate.

You would think Harvard would be eager to show how diverse a faculty they have!

Claiming that you are Indian because you are 1/64 Indian is absurd. Maybe you could explain your thinking, Lem, because it does not make sense mathematically. If somebody is 63/64 white, they are almost completely white and it is absurd to claim they are Indian.

Lem, when someone checks a box identifying themself as a Native American, they are the ones doing the racial identifying.

Me, stupid me, who never went to college, a man so dumb that I was drafted into the Army, was able to obtain death records, read Idian census rolls to figure out who was an Indian in my family.

What's wrong with this Warren woman? That she's lazy? Too stupid to make any attempt to verify her heritage? I can answer that, she isn't an Indian. She thought nobody would notice. I'm still waiting for all of these people trying to defend her to come up with the paper work. It isn't that hard.

Heading to Boston to campaign for the Warren campaign. She will not only win the election (with +10%) but also will be considered a future VP in 2016/2020. Of course, Obama/Biden will defeat Romney/[who cares] in each and every region, county, district, state, etc. The margin of victory: +20%. They will even win MA, NH, CT, VT. They will even win the reddest state in the Union: SC.

It is over, folks! Go home now. There is no election. It has been decided by everyone concerned (NYT, eg).

Speaking for myself.. My so called 'hispanic' identity, I checked that box, I checked that box because it would have been a lie to check any other box.. But when it comes right down to it.. I really dont care how people choose to perceive me in terms of racial, color.. maybe musical taste.. I want to be thought of as having good taste in music.. put that in my tomb stone.

Really, who cares about the statement "Indians have high cheekbones." Maybe they do, maybe they don't. It's simply either a fact or its not. The person saying it is correct or incorrect. It's not racist to say Whites have lighter skin (is that the politically correct way to say it?)

The importance of this story is that AA isn't what people think it is. It's an opportunity to have a real discussion about AA, find out who actually benefits from it, and decide if it is worth the paper its written on. The very simple fact about AA is that it violates the equal protections clause of the constitution. It needs to go for that reason alone.

See.. Dante.. they, the leftist, could say that you are choosing Elisabeth Warren to make the case against AA because you cant go after the elephant in the room.. The top dog Barack Obama.. blacks.. AA was started for blacks.

Wouldn't that sound sympathetic to somebody out there who is already predispose to think the worst of the right.

By saying Elisabeth Warren is a proxy.. we bobamente* hand the left an opening.

I'm assuming that is not what we on the right want to do.

* see yesterday's Secret Service escort post.

BTW I have to go to work.. but please continue to make your case if you are so inclined. I think I've exhausted mine.

Lem, I suppose what I've been trying to say is that people shouldn't be attacking Warren. They should be holding this up as an example of AA in action.

Those who feel AA is actually damaging ought to avoid their vehemence at Warren, and point to the flaws in AA. Naturally, people will be furious about Warren, and the AA supporters will then have to deal with the issue, probably by throwing Warren under the bus.

Regarding the Obamao, that story needs to run itself out. That's a powder keg, and there is nothing that can be done. Personally, I think those on the right ought to focus on the damage he has done to blacks, look to data to support it. A friend of mine points out things like energy costs really hurt poor people. So start hammering the oil issue, talk about $10.00 a gallon gas, etc.

My vague notion is the US kicked the shit out of the Indians, and felt bad enough to force them to live on reservations which are kind of like countries in the US. Somehow, though, the US still has some power over them.

We have Indian reservations because we made treaties with Indian tribes in order for the U.S. to take ownership of land that was "owned" by the tribes. I put owned in quotes because the Indians (other than some exceptions like the Cherokees) did not have the same concept of land ownership when it was expropriated. I suppose you could say we were a banana republic then, nationalizing assets and killing anyone who got in the way.

Funny, my wife is 1/4 Mohawk, since her grandmother was born on the reservation, approx same age a Elizabeth Warren, and never even thought about claiming to be an Indian/minority. As a biophysicist, I guess she just wasn't as smart as that lawyer lady.

Being 1/32nd black is certainly enough for one to be considered black for all purposes.

1/8th black apparently isn't enough for George Zimmerman, whose great-grandfather was Afro-Peruvian. I expect that he likely has some considerable American Indian ancestry in that Peruvian background as well.

McNeil - "I expect that he likely has some considerable American Indian ancestry in that Peruvian background as well."=======================That doesn't matter. The two lawyers LBJ had define the races and ethnicities magically declared there were no Native Americans south of the Mexican Border. Instead, they were all "hispanics".That was back in 1965.

The American people never had a chance to vote on the lawyers racial definitions, or the whole idea of race, gender, and ethnic preferences over white/Asian male Christian competitors.

Can someone remind me why we have Indian Reservations??… and why they have special privileges like casinos??

“We” have Indian Reservations because the Indian tribes historically were treated as independent peoples — and the reservations are (in most cases) the remnant of their ancestral homelands that we (the U.S.) didn't take from them via purchase or war. Moreover, they retain the right to govern themselves autonomously as still more or less separate nations, which is why they can opt to build casinos if the want to.

It baffles me that so many folk imagine that we “forced” Indians onto their reservations — rather than, I presume they mean, that we should have taken all of their land. Yeah, the Indians sure would sure have liked that better! Not.

Moreover, pace the common belief that tribal reservations are worthless wastelands, in many cases they're beautiful and valuable lands. I like to think about it in terms of comparing the remaining Indian lands with those of my own (Welsh) ancestors, who were treated by the invading Anglo-Saxons (English) a millennium and a half ago much like the Indians in America were treated by the U.S. Wales in Britain (hilly, poor country which the remaining ancestral Britons of Britain were pushed onto by the English) is just about exactly the size of the modern state of Israel, some 20,000 sq. km in size.

Compare that with various Indian reservations. The Navaho Nation (desert but beautiful, containing valuable minerals) is some 71,000 sq. km in area, or more than half the size of England and 3-1/2 times the size of Israel. As another example, the several reservations of the Lakota (Sioux) total up to about 32,000 sq. km in size, or more than 1-1/2 times that of Israel — and are far less densely populated. The Flathead Reservation in my own home state of Montana (and which I was born on) occupies the beautiful Flathead Valley between towering mountain ranges and borders stunning Flathead Lake. Occasionally, as with the Yurok in California, or the Hopi in Arizona, their “reservation” includes the bulk of all the territory that they ever cared about.

I put owned in quotes because the Indians (other than some exceptions like the Cherokees) did not have the same concept of land ownership when it was expropriated.

While most (not all) Indian peoples lacked the idea of private property, they certainly were more than familiar with the concept that their tribes possessed, defended and owned their ancestral lands.

It's rather amusing seeing so many folk in this thread carefully adopting the PC convention of only calling American Indians “Native Americans” — when the Indians themselves prefer “Indians” or “American Indians” by a strong plurality, just shy of an absolute majority.

Building construction is the process of adding structure to real property. The vast majority of building construction projects are small renovations, such as addition of a room, or renovation of a bathroom. Often, the owner of the property acts as laborer, paymaster, and design team for the entire project. However, all building construction projects include some elements in common - design, financial, estimating and legal considerations.Pool Maintenance Long Island